The Spy Keeper of Marseille

 The Spy Keeper of Marseille

Reviewed By  Janet Mawdesley       July 22, 2025

 

Author  Roseanna M. White

Distributor:      Amazon
ISBN:                 979-8400501791
Publisher:         Tyndale Fiction
Release Date:   21 July 2026  

   Website:   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spy-Keeper-Marseille-Roseanna-White/dp/B0FVTWMTNS

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The Spy Keeper of Marseille is a gripping and evocative story set between 1941-1944 based around a clandestine group of Resistance Operatives as the Nazi Empire is slowly taking over France, utilising the  many aspects of the Performing Arts in ‘Free France’ to try to convince the citizens of France they are not the brutal race they appear to be, but civilised people!

Zelie Bellarose is a young woman, a widow and the mother of two young children. She is an operative in an information gathering group that report to the British MI6 and has been tasked with finding new recruits to establish a wider network throughout Paris.

Marcel Laurent has just been released from a Nazi POW camp in a prisoner exchange. Why he was chosen he is not sure and when he meets his benefactor Monsieur Grigoryan, a man of immense influence in Paris, even in these challenging times, he is even more confused. He is a well-known and respected Concert Pianist.

He is told exactly why he was released and what they are asking of him, but he is unsure as to whether he is the man for the job. He makes the decision to join forces, to use his skills to do what he can to fight back, even if it means working under the ever-watchful eye of the SS.

As the days, weeks and months unfold tragedy strikes the group with their leader Navarre captured and executed leaving Zelie to take on the task of running the group, no small undertaking in a patriarchal world, especially when they work so closely with the British.

Betrayal from within shatters the tightly knit group with far reaching results which sees Zelie’s family fleeing to Switzerland and the group having to reform, relocate and hold their network together while the German forces slowly draw the strings of their occupation tighter.

When an agent becomes a double agent everyone’s lives are at risk. Zelie begins to doubt whether any of them will survive to grow old, and whether she and Marcel will ever be able to allow their growing feelings for one another to bloom.

Well researched and written, other than a few too many Americanisms used The Spy Keeper of Marseille shines a light on the bravery of the many who worked often in full view of the Germans to gather information, rescue downed airmen and cause general disruption through the long, brutal and devastating years of World War II.

Fiction, General, Historical